#8 - Sociologist: The claim that there is a large number of

[donger]

Dear Powerscore,

I chose B simply by eliminating answer choices but I'm not exactly sure how the stimulus is circular. My initial take would be that conclusion "the claim that there is a large number of violent crimes in our society is false" is the same thing as "there is not a large number violent crimes," which is also the same statement as one of the premises " violent crimes are very rare occurrences." So a premise and conclusion state the same thing. Is that correct or is there another reason for it being circular?

My initial prephrase, however, was that "rare occurrences" does not necessarily mean a non-large number.

Thank you in advance!

Donger

[Adam Tyson]

Thanks for the question, Donger. You are absolutely right in your analysis about why the argument is circular - the conclusion is merely a restatement of one of the premises. That's essentially what any circular argument does - "X must be true, because X is true."

I would have to disagree with the latter part of your post - something that is rare is also something that does not occur in large numbers. Both "rare" and "large" are of course relative terms - rare compared to what? Large compared to what? Despite that relativity issue, though, it would be internally inconsistent for someone to say that something is rare and also that it occurs in large numbers, unless they were to qualify it further, such as "There are a large number of Ferraris on the road today, but compared to Hondas the Ferraris are rare." In the case of this LR question, there is no further qualification, so "rare" and "not a large number" mean close enough to the same thing as to make this circular. Throw in the fact that the author advances no evidence in support of his claim and it becomes clear that he "presupposes the truth of his conclusion."

Hope that helped. Good work!

[donger]

Hi Adam,

Thank you for the answer! I also noted how you said "one of the premises." There were other premises but those weren't exactly "circularized" (if that's a word), which is another reason I couldn't confidently choose B.

It seems that your answer to my latter part hits right on point one of the gray areas for me in the LSAT. I sometimes find myself asking "how far am I supposed to go with my assumptions in the stimulus?" In this question, it was whether rare and non-large numbers mean the same thing or not. Generally, and like in this question, I find myself asking these questions when a certain word doesn't seem exactly equate with a word in the stimulus or answer choice. This happens sometimes during reading comprehension passages too. The Powerscore tutor I had told me that I should ask myself "is the wording ESSENTIALLY off?" but I don't think that resolved the issue for me. I can't seem to find that perfect guideline that will tell me when the wording matters or not. Do you have any suggestions? I would really appreciate any!

Donger

[Robert Carroll]

Donger,

A simple answer is that wording always matters, but that's probably not helpful in this specific instance. What you need to look at is the context, and how the author of the stimulus used the specific terms. In this case, the claim the sociologist thinks is wrong is that there is a large number of violent crimes. Does it make sense for those making the claim to be talking about a number in the abstract, or a number in relation to a whole? It has to be the latter; "large" in this context has to be relative. So the sociologist's claim about rarity, which is much more clearly relative to a whole, simply assumes that the number is not large.

Look to the context. In this case, different words expressed the same concept: the size relative to the whole. A relatively small (in other words, not-large) part is also rare.

I hope this was helpful!

Robert

[Sherry001]

Hello ;
I just had a quick question about this one. I see that there is a circular flaw going on but Am I okay to think there is another flaw? - that the author fails to consider the reason there's a large number of stories about violent crimes in the paper is because there actually is violent crimes happening in society .


1-this claimed is based on a large number of stories in the paper about violent crimes.
2- violent crimes are rare.
C: it's not true that there is a large number of violent crimes




Thanks so much
Sherry

[Lucas Moreau]

Hello, Sherry,

There is, in fact, circular reasoning going on here. It is false that there are large numbers of violent crimes, because people only think that due to their being broadly reported, but the only reason they're broadly reported is because there are not large numbers of violent crimes. You can't say "A is true because B, and B is true because A".

I think you're still seeing the same flaw - the author is convinced of his conclusion by his "evidence" and won't consider the idea that he might be wrong.

Hope that helps,
Lucas Moreau

[chiickenx]

Hi, I only got the question right through process of eliminate. I prefaced something different, perhaps. I understand the circularity; however, i don't see how my preface is wrong at the same time =[
May someone please look over my blind review? Thanks ahead of time!

Stimulus Summary:
Claim:
Our society → large number of violent crime
Author:
Violent crimes → rare
Newspaper → likely to print stories about violent crimes
Claim → based on large number of stories in newspaper about violent crimes
C. Claim → false
Prefaced Flaw: The degree of an occurrence's frequency does not tell me something about the number of occurrences… For example, there could be 1,000 crimes a day. Of those crimes, maybe there is 50 violent crimes and 950 nonviolent crimes per day. Violent crimes seem rare here, but 50 violent crimes, as it seems to me, is still a large number of violent crimes…

A.
No… it just says there's a lot… also, even if it did presuppose as such, this is still not the flaw because the whole newspaper thing, in of itself, was insufficient to support that the claim is false. At most, all it could say was that the claim was flawed. To show that the claim was false, it used the assertion regarding the rarity of violent crimes...
B.
I think so…? Kinda different from my preface, but … Since the assertion of violent crime’s rarity implies not a large number there is a circularity….? But does rarity presuppose not a large number??? I feel like violent crime's rarity only presupposes "not a large number relative to other types of crimes" -- not large number, in general.
C.
Stimulus says nothing about bias…
D.
No part to whole error.
E.
No induction flaw.

[Jeremy Press]

Hi chiickenx,

What you prephrased is not necessarily wrong. But always remember that an argument can contain multiple flaws. Thus, sometimes what you prephrase is not what ends up in the correct answer, because the writers of the test chose to write an answer that refers to one of the argument's other flaws.

To revisit your prephrase, I agree with you that part of the support for the main conclusion (which is that there are not a large number of violent crimes) is that violent crimes are rare. You're quite right to note that rarity is a relative (not an absolute) concept, so that if the author wanted to support an absolute claim about the number of violent crimes the author should have been more precise and used an absolute numerical claim in the premises.

But, that's not the only flaw and it's not the most fundamental flaw here. What if we cleaned up the relative/absolute problem you note? What if we changed the beginning of the second sentence from the relative claim "since violent crimes are very rare occurrences" to the absolute claim "since there are a small number of violent crimes?" Would that fix the problem in the argument? No, because we'd still have the circularity (in fact, we'd have an even sharper instance of circularity). Thus, the circularity in the argument is the fundamental flaw.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[a19]

Hi Powerscore!

Quick question here. Can you tell me if my diagram of this is correct?

Conclusion: Large number of violent crimes in our society is false.

Premise 1: Based on large number of newspaper stories.

Premise 2: Crimes are super rare.

Intermediate Conclusion: News people are gonna print stuff about crimes.

First, if this diagramming is wrong, then thats really where my issue is. Second, the circularity in this argument is not as obvious to me as other circular flaw questions I've seen. If this diagram is correct, could you point out where exactly the circularity is? Thanks, and apologies for having to have you break this down at such a basic level.

[Paul Marsh]

Hey a19,

I'm not sure I totally agree on whether your "Premise 1" is actually a premise, but otherwise your diagram looks good!

Using your diagram: the circular reasoning here comes with your "Premise 2" and your conclusion. Your conclusion, "Large number of violent crimes in our society is false," can be restated as, "There is not a large amount of crime in our society". This is highly circular with your Premise 2: "Crimes are super rare". That's enough of a retread for us to say that the conclusion is essentially just re-stating a premise (which is how we spot circular reasoning).

Hope that helps!